Sweet Dreams
by CrushedSummer
Summary: When it's the end of the world, you do the best you can. Sometimes, you have to take a moment to appreciate what's left.
1. Goodnight

Honoka spun the globe again, her other hand anxiously twirling the black marker in turn.

"It's just noise now, what's going on?"

On the table behind her, Umi fiddled with the radio, eyes downcast, saying "the signal just got knocked out for a minute, I think. Give it time."

Honoka looked around, attempting to contain herself, but there was precious little in the cabin. It was sparely furnished, even more sparsely decorated, and the lone window beside her desk presented only endless trees spanning the horizon. She traced stars in thick dust and counted the seconds.

Signal noise.

Thumbing through the atlas at her side, she wondered if she'd discover somewhere new.

"Ah," Umi noted dully, "it's starting to come back."

And sure enough, snippets of voice began to filter through the static.

She swallowed hard and stood, saying, "Listen, Honoka. I d-don't think I can listen to anymore of this. I understand that doing this is important to you, but please, only call me if it stops working again and you can't find the signal."

And with that, she left the room, closing the door behind her.

Honoka waited anxiously as the voice came through with increasing clarity, until the newscaster was finally intelligible.

" _God help us, the bombardment has reached New York City...it's gone._ "

"New York City..." she muttered to herself.

She flipped back through the atlas.

"...The southernmost part of New York State, located at 40.712° N, 74.005° W..."

Then she blotted out that entry and spun the globe, tarnishing the corresponding spot on its surface.

Then Honoka closed her eyes for a second, saying, "Good night, New York."

Hong Kong was next to go in a cleansing flash.

"Good night, Hong Kong."

Rivulets of black slowly dyed the globe.

The Kremlin was reduced to ash, and an image of Eli fitted across Honoka's mind; where was she now? Was she even-

She'd rather not think about that.

Venice, annihilated.

"Good night, Venice."

Toronto, the former home of over two million, was scoured from the Earth in mere seconds as she listened.

"Good night, Toronto."

Her hand was trembling badly as vast swathes of the globe were excised.

Then came a pause in the feed, she called, and Umi reentered with boxes upon boxes of equipment, mostly pre-assembled. She placed the microphone on the desk, saying, "I don't believe we'll go too far, but it should all be working."

Honoka nodded, spinning a dial on one of the machines and replying, "I think I'll steal 810 kHz; it's not like AFN Tokyo is still using it."

The navy haired girl left as quickly as she had arrived.

With one tap, Honoka's trembling voice was carried upon the open air, "H-hello. For those of you out there, I'm not gonna bother listing what's gone when it's easier at this point to list what isn't. I don't want to believe this either." She gulped. "Hopefully though, once I'm done, I'll be able to make you smile in spite of all this, even if it's only a little."

The voice on the radio behind her was growing a little clearer

"And to whoever needs it, I wish you a fond goodbye, for whatever it's worth."

As the radio began to edge onto clarity, she stood with the microphone, blood pounding in her ears.

And she began to sing.

" _The stars above explode, an eternal ballet from the black! Maybe it's only fitting that we dance with light right back..._ "

Behind her, she could hear a voice announcing the destruction of Akihabara and the surrounding cities.

But she didn't stop, even as the tears streamed down her face.

* * *

 **A/N: Here's a quick story that struck me while I was working on the Umi and Kotori one I've been talking about for ages now. That's still chugging along, don't worry.**

 **On the side I might expand this out into a mini apocalypse series. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it.**


	2. Beautiful

Brine and ozone laced the air as Eli turned and left the deck.

She hated it. The constant lurching, the constant dampness, and of course, the constant fear.

The rusted-eaten grating of the stair protested loudly as she stepped down to their so-called "mission control". Knowing Nozomi, though, she knew better than to question the value of making light of their situation.

The girl in question turned back from the doppler-sonar, saying, "Down here again, Elicchi? I told you I'd come get you if anything happened."

From the other end of the pentagonal room, Nico piped up, "This thing is practically a goddamn dinghy; I wouldn't want to be up there getting sprayed either. Not that I'm partial to this dungeon."

"Anyway," Nozomi continued, "I don't think anything _will_ happen. We're around thirty kilometers from the shore; unless they spontaneously decide to bomb Numazu, we're pretty safe."

Eli wrapped her arms around herself, scarcely able to believe she would ever be in position to hear something like that.

The hull groaned slightly as she looked around the room. Grey, slightly rusted, dimly lit by the glow of the monitors and equipment, all their provisions and bedding piled in the center.

She wished mankind had never split the atom.

Opposite Nozomi, who was staring at the navigation equipment, Nico, bleary eyed, was fiddling with their radio.

"AFN Tokyo isn't broadcasting anymore," she said, "which means either satellite radio stopped working, or, well, you know." She paused, frowning at the thought before looking up and gesturing to the display on the floor next to her. "The satellite video is just about good, though."

The blonde girl nodded, muttering, "let's not use it just yet," and paced back up to the deck.

Another bomb was dropped a last night.

She hadn't watched it happen, none of them had. The three of them had been in their bedrolls, on the verge of sleep, when the light slipping under the deck door cascaded red.

For a second, she swore she had heard Nico whispering, " _No, no, no..._ "

Then came the sound, and sea was whipped into a frenzy and she could do nothing but curl in on herself.

Nozomi had pulled the two of them close and they clung to each other until morning, exchanging hushed reassurances waiting for the tremors to stop.

It was a small consolation, but the mushroom cloud had long dissipated. She wasn't sure if she would be able to bear it looming as she did another circuit of the deck. It was all she could do to stave off the cabin fever. Her turn to navigate wouldn't be for at least an hour yet, and she dared not interrupt Nico's progress and flow.

Sure, there was open sky out here, but it was a bunker nonetheless. She was as stuck as anyone in the shelters under Akihabara.

With a sigh, she turned and went back inside.

This time she found Nico and Nozomi huddled around the radio. The former flagged her down, "Someone took over the frequency; check it out."

A female voice was intelligible, if somewhat distorted, through the static, " _...I'm not gonna bother listing what's gone when it's easier at this point to list what isn't. I don't want to believe this either. Hopefully though, once I'm done, I'll be able to make you smile in spite of all this, even if it's only a little._ "

Nico laughed bitterly.

"Ridiculous. Doesn't she know? The world's already over."

"If it bothers you that much, let's finally check out the video instead," Eli replied.

Nico turned down the radio until the singing was background noise and oriented the laptop around its mess of cables to face them.

Within a moment they were staring down at a broader view of Japan. Slowly, they zoomed in on blasted surface.

They knew the war was happening. They had seen the evacuation, heard the sirens, felt the tremors. Yet, none of them knew what to say upon seeing it all so directly.

"Tokyo...was here."

There was no detail to be discerned, only a black expanse, like a yawning shadow.

Nico had an idea, and wordlessly zoomed back out and moved towards Akihabara.

"N-Nico, wait, what if it's-"

Intact, despite the odds.

The lights were out, but their home was still standing. Eli let out a breath she hadn't realized she had been holding.

"I had to know, sorry," the smaller girl said.

It wasn't in very good quality on the monitor, but Eli could see it clearly in her mind's eye. Down here on Earth, the sun was setting. The amber light would be filtering down through the buildings, countless panes drinking it in, scintillating warmly. A city that large wouldn't sleep under ordinary circumstances, but evacuated, maybe it would finally get its much-deserved rest.

She wasn't about to lie to herself; everyone knew the peace talks were failing.

She knew that this might be the last time her home ever stood proud and beautiful.

Still, she was glad she saw at least this much.

* * *

 **A/N: I think I'll do the obvious thing and wrap this up with a chapter about the first-years. Still though, it's a nice change of pace to do a mini-series, especially when I'm STILL writing the Umi and Kotori-centric one of I've been working on for months. Anyway, I hope you're enjoying this.**


	3. The Sun

Hanayo crossed off the thirty-first on her calendar, looking back to Maki and Rin before declaring, "It's been four months."

Four months since the tremors stopped, and even longer since they had been outside. It had also been two months since their hardened communication line to the other bunkers had broken down.

Even Maki, who was usually the one to simply point out that they had provisions enough for a year, looked at her with a strung-out hunger.

"I believe I speak for all of us when I say I'm going to lose my mind if I don't breath some non-recycled air in the near-future," she said.

Hanayo nodded, and Rin exploded, "Let's go! Let's go outside!"

They crossed from the bedroom, through the octagonal junction at the bunker's center, and into the supply room on the opposite side. The mousy girl's hands were trembling slightly in nervous excitement. It felt like so long since she had been in open space, since she had a ceiling more than scarcely a foot above her head, or eaten something with flavour.

Maki handed out hardtack and they scarfed it down as she unloaded three radiation suits.

The survival manual placed in every bunker was still cracked open on the tiny dinner table.

"It says that Akihabara should be habitable right now if the bomb was 'clean' and exploded up in the atmophere," she sighed, "unfortunately, we have no goddamn idea, so don't get your hopes up for feeling the wind on your face."

Rin couldn't keep still, not that that was anything unusual for her, but if she looked closely, Hanayo could also see Maki shaking slightly. Her eyes were darkly underscored, and she was pallid under the LEDs, but she was cracking one of her rare smiles all the same.

For a moment at least.

"Rin! Have you been screwing around with the Geiger Counter again? Where is it?"

The girl in question went to rummage around deeper in the gear closet as Hanayo began suiting up. The inside was slightly cool to the touch and the sight of the attached breathing apparatus and gas mask brought back uncomfortable memories of the evacuation, but those were nothing that couldn't be quashed by the hope of seeing the sun.

After a few minutes, they were prepared.

Maki led the out, through the narrow corridors, until they were standing at the bottom of the stairway out. Their echoing footsteps on the concrete were muted in Hanayo's mask, while her breathing roared in her ears.

Rin dashed ahead of them and was already straining the valve-lock open by the time the other two reached the top. As their exit was painstakingly pried open, they suddenly found themselves awash in cool air, and the stained-glass rays of the sunset.

Hanayo walked slowly, almost dazed, up the steep concrete slope of the overpressure channel to the surface, excited and terrified for what she might see. The three reached the top in synch, squinting, willing their eyes to adjust more quickly to the light, that they might take in a view that had once encompassed the city.

And when it no longer did, none of them knew what to say.

It wasn't a blackened crater, but the overpressure had flattened most of the buildings, and left the once it hadn't in shambles.

Mute, they walked until they were at the outskirts. The sounds of the wind and broken stone under their feet seemed as though they were coming from far away through Hanayo's mask.

Just inside the limits came some of the sharper reminders of what used to be there: bits of plastic, and shards of glass, gleams in a gray landscape. If one searched carefully in the rubble and dust they could spot fragments of the kanji which used to proudly decorate the skyline.

" _UTX used to be somewhere near here..._ " she thought.

Built, only to be wiped away.

Her feet were carrying her off into the waste.

She couldn't see any evidence that other people had been through. Suddenly, she was gripped by panic; what if they were the last ones left? Was this all that humanity amounted to?

But then she saw another spec of colour peeking from the gray. Crawling up the concrete and old synthetics, she reached the top of the rubble and found it.

There was a single pale flower growing out from the cracks.

Distantly, she heard footsteps and a voice behind her.

"Hanayo. Hanayo!"

And then Maki was standing beside her.

"It's safe," she said, removing her mask, "let's go visit other bunkers."

Hanayo mirrored the action, and suddenly, a new dimension of texture and colour had sprung into the world. The flower under her was of vivid, contrasting red and green.

" _Wiped away to be rebuilt..._ "

* * *

 **A/N: I'm amazed I managed to write most of this during exams, but here we are. Now, god willing, I'll be able to finish that Umi story before too long.**


End file.
